777, the Neighbours of the Beast?

Evidence as building that without intervention, Everton could be jumping from an admittedly hot frying pan into a potential inferno of a fire.

There surely has to come a point at which the warning sirens are so loud that they can’t be ignored any more. No matter how bad things might have felt over the last few years, there’s a long way to fall from the Premier League, and when a football club is at the sort of crossroads at which Everton currently stand, the owners of that club cannot afford to get things wrong.

A little context. Everton were one of the twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888, and were the first club not called Preston North End to be the champions of England. In total, they’ve been the champions of England nine times, FA Cup winners five times and won the European Cup Winners Cup in 1985. This season marks the 70th anniversary of the last time they played football below the top flight, a record only bettered by Arsenal. 

This is… more than just a football club, and more than just an institution of the city of Liverpool itself. Everton are part of the very fabric of football in England. To mistreat this club is to mistreat the game in this country, its history and culture, the very pillars upon which its modern wealth and success are built. As always happens when a club of this size finds itself skirting close to troubled waters, it feels like something akin to an act of cultural vandalism. 

The mismanagement of the club in recent years has left supporters desperate for new ownership, but it is worth reminding anyone reading this that things can get always worse, and that no matter how bad the current ownership of the club may be, any prospective new owners should be viewed with a gimlet eye until they have demonstrated that they are worthy of the honour of running such an establishment. The only question really worth asking in this sort of situation is: do these people deserve to run Everton Football Club? 

We all know the reasons why the Miami-based 777 Partners want into the Premier League. It seems to be commonly assented that, for the riches it has already accumulated (and largely frittered away on ever more astronomical wage bills), the Premier League is undervalued. A football competition with literally global appeal only makes part of what the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA—sports with a considerably lower profile outside the USA than soccer has outside England—earn from broadcasting rights. They can see a rainbow, and they’re certain there’s a pot of gold at the end of it. 

It is, if you just want in, a perfect position. Everton are a huge club with massive history, and who’ve been underperforming on the pitch for years. They have a new stadium already being built which will—presuming they’re in the Premier League by the time it opens—considerably increase revenues. And the very specific events of the last couple of years, most notably the abrupt disappearance of ‘main sponsor’ Alisher Usmanov following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after the club had been overspending on ill-fitting players for a couple of years, have left them struggling to meet financial requirements and unable to rebuild their first team squad in the manner that they’d wish. So, they’re in a lucrative league, they have—or soon will have—brand new real estate, and they’re desperate for money. It feels a little like a perfect storm. 

The news about 777 Partners isn’t good. Over the last five years, they’ve stampeded into football club ownership, starting in 2018 with a minority stake in Sevilla. In 2021, it was Genoa, the oldest club in Italy. The next year, they became majority owners of Vasco da Gama, the second most supported club in Rio de Janeiro state, Standard Liège, French third-tier club Red Star and Hertha Berlin, while also acquiring a minority stake in Melbourne Victory. 

And if we consider the reviews to be in from these other clubs, they are not positive. There have been protests at Standard Liège, Hertha Berlin and Red Star, while Genoa, Sevilla and Hertha Berlin posted combined losses of almost £200m between them in their most recent accounts. Genoa were relegated to Serie B at the end of the new owners’ first season, and then in February of this year were docked a point after failing to pay outstanding taxes and contributions on time for September and October 2022. They were promoted back and are currently in lower mid-table in Serie A. Sevilla are two points above the relegation places in La Liga. Hertha Berlin were relegated in bottom place in the Bundesliga and are only 9th in the 2. Bundesliga now. 

Vasco da Gama were promoted back into the Brazilian Serie A at the end of 777’s first season, but are currently back in the top flight relegation places. Standard Liège, who finished second Belgium in 2018 and third the following season, now haven’t finished above 8th in the Jupiler League in four years and have seen average crowds drop from 25,000 or so just over a decade ago to under 20,000. Where there is good news to be found, it’s primarily in clubs getting back to where they should be anyway, as seen at Vasco da Gama and Genoa. But not one club owned by 777 could be described as performing anywhere near above what might have been expected of them. 

And then there’s all the… other stuff. 

At the end of September, the Washington Post ran a story detailing the heart-wrenching story of a heroin addict who claimed to have been conned out of a large sum of money by an organisation which knew that she was a drug addict and exploited her desperation for ready cash to a point at which in late 2015, she received a Facebook message from a subsidiary of  777 Partners offering her “a contract that traded away the entirety of her remaining annuity [the victim had been involved in a road traffic accident and her settlement was paid effectively in instalments over the following years], around $793,000, for $180,000, according to court records.” 

This wasn’t the only case like they uncovered, either: 

A class-action lawsuit accuses 777 of operating a payday lending scheme that contracted with a Native American tribe to bypass state laws limiting interest rates on short-term loans. Another lawsuit claims that a 777 subsidiary obtained the $2.2 million annuity of a St. Louis woman with a severe mental illness for $500,000. Attorneys general in seven states have sued a real estate firm financed by 777 for allegedly deceiving homeowners into signing deals granting the company exclusive rights to serve as their real estate agent.

According to the WaPo, a spokesman told them that, “The company hasn’t violated any laws” and that “they’ve never been convicted of anything”, but that certainly doesn’t apply to company founder Josh Wander. The Brazilian news outlet O Globo were the first to report that in 2003 Wander was charged with drug trafficking after receiving and opening a package containing 31.2 grams of cocaine that was already being tracked by law enforcement officers. Wander pleaded no contest and served probation. This time, the excuse given when the matter resurfaced was, according to 777’s attorney Joseph Lipschitz, was that he’d “made a mistake more than 20 years ago when he was in his early 20s”. There’ll always be someone on hand to make an excuse, if you’ve got the money to pay them to do so. 

There would be a proportion of supporters at any club who’d be willing to overlook past indiscretions if they get to see better footballers every week. We already know this from Scunthorpe, Newcastle and Manchester City, among many others. But with 777 everything seems to be cutting deeper. Just yesterday, investigative site Josimar Football, who’ve been digging deep on them for months, reported on the company’s failure to meet payroll to their own staff in July and to pay rent for their own headquarters, as well as the vast debt they’re running up to one financier by the name of Kenneth King. As the writers Phillipe Auclair and Paul Brown conclude: 

It would seem then, that “the bank” has a problem, raising questions as to why a company that is having so much trouble paying its own bills, which failed to pay its own staff on time at least once this year, and is in so much debt to its own lender, can be contemplating trying to take on the stretched finances of a similarly debt-ridden Premier League football team like Everton. 

And this morning, Tariq Panja at the New York Times chipped in with a report stating that 777 Partners have “failed to provide audited financial statements” to the Financial Conduct Authority ahead of the proposed sale to Everton. Speaking to Sky Sports at the start of the week, current club owner Farhad Moshiri offered a viewpoint which has already aged like milk, that, “They are highly professional and deliver exactly when they say they will, and I look forward to them achieving all their regulatory approvals and proceeding to completion on the timetable we set.”

So what more is there to be said, here? The frustration is that Everton could be made a great club again, one capable of challenging for trophies as has been the case for so much of their history. But perhaps this is just the calibre of owner that is available when you’re in hot water over FFP and have been narrowly swerving relegation for the last couple of seasons despite having the tenth highest wage bill in the division. Even taking into account the new stadium, years of mismanagement mean that Everton are a risky proposition from a purely business point of view.

Everybody is aware of 777 Partners, their modus operandum and their success rate with other clubs. Everybody knows about Josh Wander, and about the company’s debts to Kenneth King. Everybody knows they failed to meet payroll in July and that they’ve failed to pay other creditors as well. This is common knowledge now, public domain. There are no excuses. If this lot are deemed suitable to buy into the Premier League, it will be another low for a game that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The warning sirens are blaring loud and clear. All it takes is for someone to damn well listen, for once.